In an NFL season gone wrong, know which Broncos have been done wrong?
Paxton Lynch, Trevor Siemian and Brock Osweiler.
Where did the Broncos draw up this plan to develop their young quarterbacks? On the back of a cocktail napkin?
John Elway is a Hall of Fame quarterback. He should know better.
For two seasons, Denver has made sneaking into the playoffs a higher priority than the care and nurturing of a young quarterback. Building a raw QB into a franchise cornerstone might be the toughest job in pro football, and it’s often at cross-purposes with making a Super Bowl run.
The Broncos have tried to do both. That the team has failed miserably at both tasks should come as no surprise. Elway has made a legend by scoffing at the impossible, so it’s understandable why he believed it was possible to overcome the head-scratching mistakes of a young quarterback to win 10 or 11 games in a season.
But here’s the collateral damage from Elway’s hubris. The team might have ruined any chance for Lynch, Siemian or Osweiler to be a viable NFL starter in the process. Do the majority of fans in Broncos Country really think any of these three young players, all battered physically and/or psychologically after being tossed by this crazy QB carousel, is the man?
Now that it appears coach Vance Joseph’s job is safe, the two meaningless regular-season games on the schedule offer Lynch a second chance to make a final impression. Does that make any sense?
After getting three NFL starts, in which he has thrown the grand total of 97 passes, Lynch is widely regarded as a bust around these parts. To be sure, Lynch deserves his share of blame for that perception, because he has always seemed more like an accidental tourist in a Denver uniform than a dedicated first-round draft choice. But if the Broncos decide to discard him after two seasons, then it would also underscore the notion this franchise never had a solid plan for developing an asset Elway spent big to obtain, by trading up to select Lynch out of Memphis in 2016.
But here’s the sad part: Drafting a quarterback without a clue of what to do with him is really nothing new for the Broncos. Denver took Osweiler in the second round in the 2012 draft. If there’s a meme of Osweiler with staying power, however, it’s of a discouraged QB standing on the sideline, throwing up his hand in disbelief, as Peyton Manning trots on the field to rob his young teammate of snaps during a 41-17 rout of Oakland in 2014.
During his time with the Broncos, Osweiler has beaten Tom Brady in overtime, subbed with distinction for Manning during Denver’s run to the Super Bowl 50 championship and just maybe saved Joseph’s job by coming off the bench with the Broncos trailing Indianapolis to beat the Colts.
And what thanks does Osweiler get for the effort? Well, it makes business sense for the Broncos to bench him in order to give Lynch a look in the remaining games against Washington and Kansas City. Largely unappreciated in Denver for going on five years, it probably also makes business sense for Osweiler to look elsewhere in the NFL for work next season.
Committing to a young quarterback requires a franchise to accept the growing pains that result in defeat. Instead, the approach in Denver has been to treat its young quarterbacks as disposable parts. Nobody has felt more pain than Siemian.
Given 24 starts behind a lousy offensive line, Siemian has literally sacrificed his body for the cause, busting up the same shoulder twice in two years. He has won 13 games, been sacked 64 times and been the quarterback of record during one of the more frustrating periods of Broncos history.
Some day, Siemian will look back on this and it will all seem funny.
But the way the Broncos have treated their young quarterbacks is a joke.
Before deciding to take another quarterback in the draft, whether Denver might be tempted to trade for Sam Darnold of Southern Cal or inclined to take a chance on Baker Mayfield of Oklahoma, what Elway needs to do is commit to taking the heat for a young player trying to learn the toughest job in the NFL.
